Serious Difficulties in ‘Little Berlin’: This Minuscule Village Divided in Half by the Cold War
A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.
Commemorating the Past
Months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”
“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”
Past Context
Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.
After the War Division
Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.
Escalation of Border Measures
Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.
Museum Creation
I heard stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.
Preserved Buildings
Two observation towers are maintained together with a set of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.
Wider Background
The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.
Village Life
Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.
Visitors
For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.
Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.
Present-Day Evolutions
The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to
